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Article published In:
Journal of Historical Linguistics
Vol. 13:1 (2023) ► pp.35–81

The negative cycle in Chinese

From synthetic to analytic and back to synthetic negation?

| National Tsing Hua University
The present discussion proposes that renewal processes in the domain of negation manifest themselves predominantly in the change from bi-morphemic, synthetic negation to analytic negation neg+aux by introducing a new auxiliary verb as verbal head. Some of these new verbs may subsequently be merged with the negator resulting into new bi-morphemic negation. The proposed analyticization process accounts for different kinds of complex negation, including aspectual and modal negation, the copula and negative focus markers. I propose a unified mechanism for the morpho-syntactic processes, which change the system of negation in Chinese. Two morpho-syntactic factors contribute to this particular grammaticalization process of Chinese: (1) the diachronically consistent head initial word order within the functional and the lexical (CP/vP) domains (with the exception of sentence-final particles); and (2) the morpho-phonological rule that negation has to attach directly to aux, i.e., to a weak verbal head. Based on particularly the second constraint, I propose that only the combination neg+aux mod leads to the emergence of new fused negators constituting the head of a Negative/Modal phrase, i.e., a negative phrase (NegP) with modal features. The renewal process of the verbal heads of bi-morphemic negation is caused by semantic bleaching and an increasing intransparency of the negator which triggers the grammaticalization of new (often defective) lexical verbs via upward movement from the lexical to the functional domain. It accounts for the grammaticalization of the aspectual negator wèi 未, of the (negative) copula of Early Archaic Chinese into focus marker and complementizer, and for the replacement of synthetic by analytic modal negation neg mod > neg+aux mod.
Keywords: negation, synthetic, analytic, linguistic cycle, Chinese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Negation in Chinese
    • 2.1Negative markers in Archaic Chinese
      • A.p/f-negative markers bù 不, fú 弗, and fēi 非
      • B.m/w-negation markers wú 無/毋, wù 勿, wèi 未
    • 2.2The morpho-syntax of negative markers in Archaic Chinese and the negator bù
  • 3.Bi-morphemic negators and their functions
    • 3.1Copulas, focalization markers, complementizers
    • 3.2The negative markers wēi 微 and fēi 非
    • 3.3The aspectual negative marker wèi 未 ‘not yet’
    • 3.4Modal negation
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.21026.mei
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